Why Giants Drove a Beetle; A Correction; R8 vs AMG GT

IMPORTANT update on the ID. Buzz. A thing we hated we may not hate anymore. Plus, why did Matt's 6'5" dad and his equally large brothers own a VW Beetle? The EV mandate is over, plus we answer Patreon questions including: Used Audi R8 or AMG-Mercedes GT Imperfect cars that are perfect for ONE thing? Which cars have we changed our mind on? Favorite camera gear right now Is there a V8 Lotus could put in the Emira? Should I PPF my mountain car? Is it true that Porsche 911 owners don't like the Carrera GT? Which special edition car would we want (if any)? Are air-cooled Porsches even worth the money? Recorded May 22, 2025 Hello Fresh Go to https://www. HelloFresh.com/smokingtire10fm now to get 10 Free Meals with a Free Item For Life. Cremo Head to Target or Target.com to find Cremo’s new line of antiperspirants and deodorants in the Italian Bergamont and Palo Santo scents New merch! Grab a shirt or hoodie and support us! https://thesmokingtireshop.com/ Use Off The Record! and ALWAYS fight your tickets! For a 10% discount on your first case go to https://www.offtherecord.com/TST Want your question answered? Want to watch the live stream, get ad-free podcasts, or exclusive podcasts? Join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thesmokingtirepodcast Tweet at us! https://www. Twitter.com/thesmokingtire https://www. Twitter.com/zackklapman Instagram: https://www. Instagram.com/thesmokingtire https://www. Instagram.com/therealzackklapman

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Matt Farah?

  What's up everybody, welcome to the Smoking Tire Podcast. My name is Matt Farah, and before we get to the program, y'all gotta know about Off the Record, which I'm sure you already do, because you listen to every single episode that we put out, and if you don't, you should. Off the Record is our sponsor. They are awesome. I love Off the Record, and so many of you do too. Leave a comment if Off the Record has saved your backside on this program, because they have saved mine many, many times. Here's the scenario. You are minding your business on the freeway, and there is a police officer who pulls you over for whatever. You then get a ticket. Don't argue with the officer. Fight it out in court with Off the Record.

• 0:44Matt Farah?

  Take that ticket, say "Thank you, sir," go on your way, and then call Off the Record. They will assign an attorney in the jurisdiction where you got pulled over to fight that case, and most of the time, they is getting them points off your record, and if they don't, you don't pay. It's like that. It's great. I love Off the Record. You love Off the Record, and the way you use Off the Record is go to offtherecord.com/tst. That's offtherecord.com/tst. That'll get you 10% off all legal services from Off the Record, and just keep that one handy, because sooner or later, you are going to need it. Just trust me on that.

• 1:27Matt Farah?

  Alright folks, on this episode, we have an update about the worst part of the Volkswagen ID buzz. The Senate has killed California's EV mandate. Boo. Some people are like, "Boo? Wait a minute, who is this guy?" My dad has a story about why he bought and road tripped his Volkswagen Beetle, and a whole lot more. It's the Smoking Tire Podcast. Let's get to it.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  We are living.

• 2:01Matt Farah?

  Really?

• 2:01Speaker 01

  On the internet.

• 2:02Matt Farah?

  Are we dying just to live?

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Uh, we're alive on the internet like Neo and the rest of The Matrix, but are we really alive?

• 2:08Matt Farah?

  I can't tell you how much I love the misunderstanding of the term red pill.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Of the what?

• 2:15Matt Farah?

  Of the term red pill.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Up from the movie?

• 2:18Matt Farah?

  The misinterpretation of The Matrix by certain people. Anyway, "Anywho's'll be," as Gary would say. What's happening? Hello, it's the Smoking Tire. Yes, it is. It's your favorite. It's your favorite automotive podcast. I wear glasses now, so I can talk like this.

• 2:36Matt Farah?

  It's appropriation.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:37Matt Farah?

  I'm appropriating the dialect of the nerdery. Big, big update, major correction. In the interest of journalistic integrity.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:49Matt Farah?

  I have to issue an update slash correction from last, last episode.

• 2:56Matt Farah?

  Excuse me. As it turns out, if, and only if, you open the rear windows of the ID Buzz to exactly 50%,

• 3:11Matt Farah?

  you can drive without buffeting at up to normal highway speeds. And let me tell you what a delight that is. This is a vehicle that's meant for the windows down. It really is.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  It fixes it.

• 3:23Matt Farah?

  Except, you know, okay, so I, I, it is possible. We thought it wasn't possible. There is, the forum was right. It was possible. 50% rear window is the number. But that brings you back to the terrible rear window controls. Now, if you want to put any window down, you have to put a rear window down too, which means you have to go down, rear, half down.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:48Matt Farah?

  And then you have to do the reverse on the way up, unless you just get out of the car with the windows down and hold lock on fob for like five seconds, all the windows will close.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  That's good. I hate that window switch system so very much.

• 4:03Matt Farah?

  But I don't want to be out there on the record being like, "Ah, it's impossible." And people are like, "Ferrand, Viner." Correction, it's possible. The forum was right. That's how you do it.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  You know what's weird? Like, I've read David Tewig's book. David, you don't have to email us about this. I'm gonna say, his book informed me and us on how much it costs to change a tiny thing in a car, right? The chapter on changing the key fob design, if you make 500,000 cars a year, blah, blah, blah, blah. Over 10 years, sure. So this window switch for VW, though. They save a couple cents probably, because instead of having four switches on the left side, they have two. Okay. Capacitive button, how much does that cost? They also, what coupe does VW make? Like, my brain's going, if everything they make is a four-door, basically, why not have four switches? All your cars need it. It's not like 90% of their cars are two-door coupes.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  And they went, "What can we do? We have all these two window switches." How do we make that work for a four-door?

• 5:04Matt Farah?

  The real, the patch that I would do, because remember Ferrari, they patched the steering wheel thing, where now you have to double-click it to activate it? A patch I would do if I was Volkswagen is, if you hold down the normal window switches for long enough, the rears should open also.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Does it not do that? Someone said the ID.4, the ID.4 had a patch that now I can't remember the details of, but it was like, it was a journalist problem, not a owner problem, maybe? But I still think it's worse.

• 5:31Matt Farah?

  I tried in this, and you can do it today. If you just hold down the front two, it does not eventually open the rear two. If you hold down the remote, it'll open all four.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  While driving?

• 5:43Matt Farah?

  No, from outside the car.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Okay. I also tried pressing and holding on that capacitive rear thing.

• 5:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  And it didn't do anything.

• 5:50Matt Farah?

  No, it doesn't. You have to hit rear to activate rear, and this is dumb. That's dumb.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  I mean, someone said, yeah, EOS. When did they stop making the EOS?

• 5:58Matt Farah?

  When did they stop making the EOS? I don't know. Why? Is that the last car that had regular buttons?

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Well, no, it might be the last two-door coupe they made. I mean, Scirocco in Europe?

• 6:06Matt Farah?

  No, in Europe, they've got, I think they have both a three-door Golf and a Scirocco. Or had, up until very recently.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Scirocco's cool.

• 6:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah. But, yeah, no, okay. But anyway, I want to be on the record about that. Also...

• 6:22Matt Farah?

  We got a, uh, I got a Beetle story from my dad. We talked in the last podcast about if people who had the old Beetle were into the new Beetle. And maybe if they were not because the new Beetle was so much different from the old Beetle, right? My dad happened to have an old Beetle, which he shared with his two brothers, all of whom were over six feet tall, which is a funny thing to think about. Uh, my story on the Beetle was incomplete, but it is a pretty good story.

• 6:51Matt Farah?

  They got the Beetle because it was the cheapest car you could buy. Straight up cheapest new car you could buy. None of them really gave a shit about cars. Furthermore, my grandfather figured out that it was even cheaper if you took European delivery. And so, uh, my dad and his two brothers went to Germany and took European delivery of the Beetle in 1967, green over, uh, blue, uh, dark blue over tan. Drove around Europe together in, uh, for, for two months.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 7:27Matt Farah?

  And then shipped the car home and it just became the, the kids, the family car for the three kids. They then drove it cross-country to, um, to California. And yeah, when they got there, they said, he said, my dad said, the engine gradually lost compression after about Nebraska. And he said, you know, he's-

• 7:51Speaker 01

  As you approached the largest mountains on the western side of the United States.

• 7:54Matt Farah?

  So, you know, he said, he said, you know, when, if you were really, if you were really going, you know, when you, when, when it was new, you know, it could probably go like 80 miles an hour. If you really had, had room, right? Um, he said, by the time we got to California, like it would only do 50.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 8:10Matt Farah?

  So he said, yeah, they had to rebuild the engine in California and they spent a couple of years. I thought they left the car in California. No, it turns out my grandpa came out and helped them find some kind of shop to do some kind of rebuild on it. Um, and then they did drive it home and it was, it remained their high school car until my, till they all went to college. And my dad was the youngest one. He said, once his, uh, his older brother Ron-

• 8:41Matt Farah?

  Took it out on a snowy night and crashed it. And it was at the body shop for like two weeks. And he said, you know, Ron felt bad. And so he let my dad use his, uh, his 70 Corvette or his 71 Corvette. For a couple of months. So he said he was rolling in to high school in a, in a pretty new vet. Which was cool.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Is that when you realized he should get a GTO? He went, oh, this is more fun.

• 9:06Matt Farah?

  It probably was because like the, the Beetle was 67. My dad was, would have been a senior in high school. In 70, 71. Ron was like seven, eight years older. So he was like, he had like his first big, you know, out of college. Like he's an accountant. So, you know, 26 year old in this, in the early seventies accountant like, hell yeah Corvette.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:27Matt Farah?

  Um, and yeah, I think my, then my dad's next car would have been in 72, which was the GTO. Yeah. So maybe he got the bug from the Corvette.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 9:37Matt Farah?

  But eventually it just, you know, it got sold off. But, uh, but I said, did you, you know, did you care that it was air cooled? Did you care about the efficient design or anything like that? I, he goes, Matt, it was the cheapest car that was a car.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  I can hear, I can hear him saying it.

• 9:55Matt Farah?

  Yeah, just like that, right?

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:57Matt Farah?

  Matt?

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Matt?

• 9:58Matt Farah?

  It was a car.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  The cheapest car.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Do you think I would have chosen that thing? Uh, that's pretty cool adventure though. German delivery and all that stuff.

• 10:08Matt Farah?

  Yeah, right. The German, German, three high school kids doing German delivery of a Beetle? It's pretty rad. Good, good time.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Also, you know, just 20 years after the whole kerfuffle. All this like.

• 10:19Matt Farah?

  Yeah. West German delivery of a Beetle.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  I'm just saying like, it wasn't that long ago.

• 10:23Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  You know, 20 years ago, when my car was made, if I show, it just.

• 10:27Matt Farah?

  Listen, it was my dad's side, not my mom's side. You know?

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 10:31Matt Farah?

  My mom's side is the Jewish side.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Ah, right.

• 10:34Matt Farah?

  Yeah. My dad's side, not, not Jewish.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  They walked off the plane like.

• 10:37Matt Farah?

  No, I'm not saying, I'm not saying they were for what went on over there. I'm just saying that they weren't like, not driving German cars. It wasn't a thing like that. My, my, uh, my grandparents, my moms would not, they wouldn't go near a German car.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Same.

• 10:52Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Grandfather was Cadillac all the way to the end.

• 10:55Matt Farah?

  Right?

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Yep. All the way till he rounded along the side of the garage. Uh, that's true. He had the same.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Seventy-two Eldorado, white with red interior.

• 11:07Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  From as long as I can remember until he stopped driving. The thing was, the longest, curb feelers, white top, like, the longest car in the world.

• 11:16Matt Farah?

  Every one of my grandparents' last cars was a Cadillac. And my last grandma, who died in twenty nineteen, uh, no, yeah, yeah, twenty nineteen, she died like two months before our wedding. Um, she had, her, her last Cadillac was a Cattera. The caddy that zigs.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:39Matt Farah?

  Straight up.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  The agile, agile car.

• 11:42Matt Farah?

  Could have, I could have inherited if I wanted to. I considered trying to turn it into like a Lemons race car. Um, but my, my, my little cousin like needed a car and so that was probably better, better use of the Cattera.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 11:57Matt Farah?

  Than me, than me just gutting it.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Right, destroying it as a race car, discarding it.

• 12:02Matt Farah?

  People who need cars should get them first. If you don't need them, then we can, we could talk about that later, you know, never. Uh, so yeah, did you get a, did you get a Beetle story from your mom yet?

• 12:11Speaker 01

  No, I forgot. I'll, I'll call her today and find out.

• 12:13Matt Farah?

  Hopefully it's better than my dad's Beetle story. Hopefully she cared about it being air-cooled and efficient packaging.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  I feel like there will be an, a, a police interaction story in there, San Francisco in the sixties.

• 12:25Matt Farah?

  Well, yeah, no, you're.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Just speculating.

• 12:27Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, my dad was a Jersey.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:29Matt Farah?

  And I don't think he had a choice in what the car was. I mean, he was the, he didn't, he didn't even have a driver's license when that car became part of the family. So he was not part of that decision. But your mom chose a Beetle.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:42Matt Farah?

  Right? Okay, so she may.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  She got rid of a Mustang.

• 12:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah, she might have a better, a better story there in terms of that, but did she do European delivery?

• 12:49Speaker 01

  No, definitely not.

• 12:51Matt Farah?

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• 13:33Matt Farah?

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• 14:18Matt Farah?

  So you can fit great meals that fit your spring schedule and make the season even more delicious. If you go to hellofresh.com/smokingtire10fm. Man, they are really getting complex with these codes. Write it down, folks. Hellofresh.com/smokingtire10fm. And that stands for 10 free meals with a free item for life. One box, one per box with active subscription. Free meals applied as a discount on first box. New subscribers only, varies by plan. Hellofresh.com/smokingtire10fm. And we're also brought to you today by Cremo.

• 15:02Matt Farah?

  Loving this Cremo because I have been trying to be a good husband to my wife and doing morning workouts. That's right. Normally, I'm an afternoon workout guy, but I have been hitting the gym before work and going to Legree class with my wife. And the exercise is good, but coming to work after is... problematic also if I'm up on the mountain all morning filming it is hot up there now and there is some potential for stank and Cremo is here to solve this providing men with 48 hour odor protection Cremo products are all barber grade made with pride professionalism and passion to guarantee you quality without

• 15:47Matt Farah?

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• 16:32Matt Farah?

  yep and Cremo has got other stuff too a wide range of other grooming products for men including shaving cream beard oil and shampoo so you can find your favorite scent and buy the whole body care line head over to Target or Target.com to find Cremo's new line of antiperspirants and deodorants in the Italian bergamot and Palo Santo scents once again look for Cremo at Target or Target.com and now back to the program you know what's pissing me off um I mean there's a lot well this could go

• 17:03Speaker 01

  it really grinds my gears

• 17:05Matt Farah?

  yeah um in um in like Instagram and car listings and whenever people are referring to an exotic manual transmission car of a certain period of time they always say gated manual

• 17:23Matt Farah?

  Even it like even the like like a Lamborghini Murciello. Murcielago, it always says gated gated. It's like, of course, they're all like that.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 17:33Matt Farah?

  You could just, you don't have to say it anymore.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Eh, you know that, but I think.

• 17:36Matt Farah?

  I'm very tired of reading gated about, uh, it's just redundant. It's a fucking manual. They're all gated.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 17:44Matt Farah?

  As a matter of fact, every manual Ferrari made since like the seventies is a gated fucking manual.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  So do you want them to say gated transmission?

• 17:53Matt Farah?

  No, say manual.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Get rid of the gated.

• 17:55Matt Farah?

  Yeah, get rid of the word gated. Why?

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Cause it's unique. It's special to certain brands. Not every manual car has it, so it's not actually redundant. And I think if you're like a new person to cars, if you're 12 and you read it and you see, nah, you're just too weathered. You've been here too long.

• 18:08Matt Farah?

  If you're 12, you don't care about driving stick.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 18:12Matt Farah?

  Nobody, no one that's 12 cares about driving stick.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  That's true. We might like seeing the gated thing.

• 18:17Matt Farah?

  I just, I, I, I hate it. It's just, I'm over it.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  I don't mind it.

• 18:21Matt Farah?

  There's words I'm tired of seeing and the word gated is one.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  I don't mind it at all. Yeah. Especially if there's no pictures in the article.

• 18:28Matt Farah?

  Huh? There's always pictures. I'm like talking about Instagram.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 18:31Matt Farah?

  I'm not, I'm not talking about journalism.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  I thought you meant like in a magazine.

• 18:34Matt Farah?

  I'm not talking about journalism. I'm talking about garbage Instagram shit.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 18:39Matt Farah?

  Like, like specifically, I'll, I'll tell you the one, there was a post about cars that are in movies.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:46Matt Farah?

  Specifically.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 18:48Matt Farah?

  Exotic cars in movies. It's an account that posts, it's almost like an IMDb type account, but for cars in movies.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Can I guess which car they talk about?

• 18:57Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  355 Spider in the Rock.

• 18:59Matt Farah?

  No, but good guess.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Cause there's a, there's a close shot of him shifting that specifically.

• 19:03Matt Farah?

  No, but good guess. This is about the, uh, the group of Lamborghinis that were used to film, uh, I guess it was The Dark Knight. The gray, gray Mercys, gray Alpines. And like the four, the four cars used in the film. And like two of them were manual and two of them were automatic.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Gated manual.

• 19:22Matt Farah?

  And it just com- repeatedly, like four or five times throughout the post gated gated gated gated.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Okay, that's too much.

• 19:30Matt Farah?

  Yeah, but like it's, yes, that's well other.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 19:33Matt Farah?

  It wasn't until I saw it this much that I felt like talking about it on the podcast. But when I saw it, I went, ugh, we need to stop this. And then I wrote it down and now we've filled three minutes of content. See how that works?

• 19:46Speaker 01

  I think, I think more than once in any article or post, saying gated manual, that's too much.

• 19:51Matt Farah?

  Sure, okay, let's make a rule. Let's make a rule, more than once in any post, that's good, that's a good starting point.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Completely.

• 19:56Matt Farah?

  Okay, alright, more than, yeah, I mean, that's easy, right?

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Cause then people know.

• 20:00Matt Farah?

  You say it once.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  And then later you can say, the shifter, the transmission, and everyone goes, I know what it is.

• 20:05Matt Farah?

  And also, more than zero times if your headline photo is of that thing.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  I'll agree with that, cause they're not, they're not gonna see the text without seeing the picture on Instagram.

• 20:18Matt Farah?

  It's gonna be there.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree with that.

• 20:20Matt Farah?

  Okay, that's a good one, yeah.

• 20:23Matt Farah?

  Definitely, and if you, if you use it like more than three times in like, let's just say, an Instagram post, I think you need to quit the business.

• 20:36Matt Farah?

  You have to deactivate your account.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, you just, well, it's a...

• 20:42Matt Farah?

  Because now, I'll tell you why, now you're training AI and it's all our fucking problem.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  And then it's all gonna be gated shifter.

• 20:48Matt Farah?

  Your stupidity is now, this is like, it's like Tesla's on public roads. Like, that's why you shouldn't be able to use FSD, cause I'm there on my motorcycle, cause your stupidity is now my problem? Your shit, your output trash is now training AI. And I can't live with that now.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  I feel like it would be...

• 21:07Matt Farah?

  I refuse to abide by that, the dude will not.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Well, for your analogy, it would be like if the Tesla cars were only following bad drivers and then learning how to drive from the bad, on the way down here, in the canyon, I followed this truck. It had a trailer on the back with a rascal scooter in it, no license plate, the rear window shield is, the rear window's gone, blown out. Just a mess, this person's had a real bad time. And they were doing 30 the whole way. And some people made what I would call dangerous passes to go around me past this person. I just said, forget it, I'll just chill.

• 21:37Matt Farah?

  I bet, yeah.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  But if the AI was following that particular driver, this person was in the dirt, then they crossed the yellow, then they were in the dirt, they were braking at weird points, while also going, like, it was the most dangerous driving under the speed limit I've seen in quite a while.

• 21:51Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  So FSD might have learned something from them.

• 21:53Matt Farah?

  Yeah, you can't have that training.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  You need to follow limousine drivers, like, good ones.

• 21:59Matt Farah?

  The Rolls Royce chauffeur manual is what we need fucking happening here.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 22:04Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I, like...

• 22:07Matt Farah?

  If Rolls Royce came out with a semi-autonomous system and said, "This is trained on..."

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 22:14Matt Farah?

  "...the tenets of the Rolls Royce chauffeur manual."

• 22:17Speaker 01

  They will.

• 22:18Matt Farah?

  That would be sick.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  They will.

• 22:20Matt Farah?

  You know?

• 22:21Speaker 01

  When they introduce it, that is too strong a marketing point to not use it, but also they'll go-

• 22:26Matt Farah?

  Imagine a Rolls Royce opera coupe, right? Where, you know, like back in the day, when you had the rear passengers in an enclosed thing and the outside driver was just open?

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:37Matt Farah?

  Imagine that shape, but no outside driver, just longer nose to further back. And it was just a 25-foot car with, that's a two-seater in the back, and, and nobody and nothing driving up there? That would be the most, you know, obnoxious opera coupe shit. There's a guy just drove by the other day.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  That's what Sam Altman will pull up in in 2040.

• 23:02Matt Farah?

  Can you Google Cadillac Eldorado Opera Coupe? There's a, there were these, I don't think they were factory, I think they were custom, but there was, there was these early 80s Cadillacs that were turned into these like, uh, there, that one on the third one, Seville Opera Coupe, that's the one. That have these real short-

• 23:24Matt Farah?

  It's kind of like the Cadillac version of like a little bit what I'm talking about, but from 1979.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  It's an atrocious looking vehicle.

• 23:32Matt Farah?

  Dude, let me tell you, there's one that rolled by the shop yesterday that's all black, no landau roof, it's got a painted roof, all black. What we're looking at, imagine you took a Cadillac sedan, Seville, and eliminated the front seat, and only left the backseat, moved the windshield back to the backseat, just extended the hood right through where the front seat would be, to the backseat, and then put two, uh, in-body spare tires on each side.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Spare tire carriers.

• 24:04Matt Farah?

  And you're, you're driving the car basically from where the backseat would be with this ginormous schnoz. It's kind of fabulous.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Take an SLS, but make it, make it in, um, Minecraft.

• 24:18Matt Farah?

  So now picture this vehicle. Now, I saw one go by yesterday. Black with all gold trim and Dayton's, 13 Dayton's.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  I'm not making fun of that car, because that person can fuck me up.

• 24:33Matt Farah?

  Right. All the extra room in that car is full of guns, you know? And I saw him go by twice. I almost wanted to chase this motherfucker up the road. I have to say, in all black with gold Dayton's, it is actually quite hilariously awesome.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Look at, I just, maybe that's just a reflection.

• 24:50Matt Farah?

  It is a coach, it's a coach-built thing. It's not a factory thing. It's from Florida, Pompano Beach, of course.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  I think the hood opens very far, I think the opening for the hood seems very far back on the hood.

• 25:03Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  You see the line?

• 25:04Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  So for people listening, like, the front, imagine where the front bumper is. Go back two full feet, that's where the seam is for the hood. And then you open it and you maintain, so it's like the engine is set back behind the axle.

• 25:15Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  But that's weird.

• 25:17Matt Farah?

  Front mid.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  That's very weird.

• 25:18Matt Farah?

  Front mid.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  It's front mid, but at least not like an AMG GT. You open the hood, the whole thing opens.

• 25:23Matt Farah?

  I mean, I bet it's flimsy as shit, but if you are in Los Angeles and turned one of these into a lowrider, it would be awesome. You tell me this wouldn't be sick as a lowrider? In the right color? I think it would be amazing.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  I mean, the proportions would wear on me a bit. It'd be funny for a little while.

• 25:39Matt Farah?

  Can we find one a different color? It's, this, this two-tone white and blue is doing it no favors. And if you can see, if there's one monochrome, oh, look at the silver, look at the silver. It looks like a fucking Aston. The silver, go down. Look at that one. They've got, yeah, no spares. Look, it looks like, it looks Italian with no spares on the side.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Alright, so this is all white, and that looks weird.

• 26:03Matt Farah?

  It looks...

• 26:04Speaker 01

  It looks, it looks tiny. It looks like a microcar.

• 26:07Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  With this little...

• 26:08Matt Farah?

  No, it is kind of small. The gray without the spare tires on the side. And the big Ferrari-like vents.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  They put the big vents.

• 26:15Matt Farah?

  It's kind of cool.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  This is like a weird boxy, you know what this is? Before its time, this is like a Cadillac XLR.

• 26:22Matt Farah?

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  It looks like a Vette. Like, the proportions look like Corvette, but it's square.

• 26:26Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  This is so strange.

• 26:29Matt Farah?

  I mean, it's stupid, but it's also like a little awesome.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  It's not bad like that.

• 26:34Matt Farah?

  Now picture it full black with Dayton's and you're like, "Yeah, I get it. That's alright."

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Are there more pictures here?

• 26:42Matt Farah?

  Oh, there's more pictures of this one. Okay, cool. Do we have a good interior? It looks great at the rear three-quarter. Looks awesome. Those might actually be Dayton's.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  This is like a Monte Carlo coupe.

• 26:52Matt Farah?

  Oh wow, the interior is really nice in this. It's got a narty steering wheel like a Miata. Burlwood narty wheel.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Interior is not nice, I would say.

• 27:00Matt Farah?

  No, it's not nice, but it's in good condition. It's not like aesthetically nice.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Right, other than that dash situation.

• 27:05Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  What a weird thing.

• 27:07Matt Farah?

  Not a lot of legroom, though.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a Monte Carlo SS, but you only sit in the back.

• 27:13Matt Farah?

  Kinda sick.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  That's kinda funny. Whoever decided to do these Ferrari scallops, I mean, they're not even, but I like the idea.

• 27:22Matt Farah?

  I like the idea. I think that they're about 20% vertically too big.

• 27:28Matt Farah?

  They're a little too tall.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, they'd look pretty good, a little slimmer.

• 27:31Matt Farah?

  A little smaller, but the idea is there. Somebody photoshop a little better one.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  They're missing one.

• 27:36Matt Farah?

  Yeah. But anyway, now we know about the... I don't know how we got here, but why did we get here?

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Uh, you saw one.

• 27:43Matt Farah?

  Oh, I guess I did. Yes, I did.

• 27:47Matt Farah?

  Did you, uh, did you read... By the way, this is recorded on, uh...

• 27:51Speaker 01

  May 23rd.

• 27:51Matt Farah?

  May 23rd.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  The 4th of the Great War.

• 27:54Matt Farah?

  Right. For the records, um, EV tax credits, House voted to get rid of them. No reason the Senate won't also. So, cool. Not like we've done, like those helped or anything. That's nice. And also, a lot of funding for alternative energy projects and battery storage and things like that. So, yay. That's really fun.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Medicaid cuts, but that's a different show.

• 28:24Matt Farah?

  That's a different show. This is the car part. I'm sticking to cars, Zach.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Okay, battery storage for cars.

• 28:29Matt Farah?

  People are... About once a week, people find new and unique innovative ways to tell me to stick to cars without using the words "stick to cars." It's actually quite fun to read.

• 28:41Matt Farah?

  Before saying something like, you know, not me, but like some people might be turned off by that. So you better like just stick to cars, you know, when you talk, you talk about political things. Uh, you know, some people like not me, like I'm like a libertarian, but like, you know, other people might be turned off by those topics. Okay.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  They might be, I get it. If you hear people talk about something that you don't agree with, yeah, it's difficult.

• 29:06Matt Farah?

  Um, but yeah, the EV, uh, I mean, look, part of it was like the California, there's the California EV mandate thing. They killed that.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:15Matt Farah?

  Um, they were 20 by 2035. There was, and we sort of called that that wouldn't make it.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  That, that kind of thing has been happening, I mean, California, it also happened in Europe and they keep having to move it back because infrastructure, the cost of the car, everything, nothing is ready in time and that's totally fair and understandable.

• 29:35Matt Farah?

  They keep moving it back. They don't kill it, you know, like having it in place keeps progress moving, even if you do move the date goalpost.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 29:47Matt Farah?

  Right? It's like a, it does, even if the year's inaccurate, it does sort of become a statement of intent to at least have something, right? To at least like force automakers to improve their efficiency, improve their, um, uh, their EV. Although obviously Trump and all these people just don't give a shit about EVs at all or, and, and would kill them out of spite.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  Except for Tesla.

• 30:11Matt Farah?

  Uh, that may be not so much anymore.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a good point. That's fair.

• 30:16Matt Farah?

  Maybe not so much anymore, but before everyone celebrates Elon being gone, just remember that while he was there, he got basically every single thing he wanted, which is pretty much any agency in charge of overseeing any of his companies has been irredeemably wrecked. I mean, just, just wrecked. And so people can be all, ha, ha, Trump didn't keep you around. And like, that's funny for a minute, but he gets to go home like with. So many regulations just gone that were there last year on like all the companies he runs. So actually, he ran a major con on the fucking US presidency and then was like, see ya, I can just like leave now.

• 30:59Matt Farah?

  And or he just bought his way in and Trump was like, look, 130 days. You do anything you want for 130 days, then you gotta go. You just buy me into office, which could have happened too. I mean, either way, gets what he wants before he leaves. Um, but anyway, EV shit. Um, you know, California's is now dead, so we don't have that. And then the EV incentives are now dead. So 7,500 federal tax credit, $4,000 used tax credit, dead. Which so on top of tariffs, on top of whatever, like all electric cars just got like stupidly more expensive.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:33Matt Farah?

  Um, which maybe is good for the, well, it's not good for anything, but maybe is good for the secondhand EV market.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  If you're a seller, sure, they got more expensive.

• 31:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  But I think that's, they're also more expensive to buy. You know, are there, there are less people, maybe, maybe less people will get into EVs because the used cars just got more expensive. And also people will probably hang on to them longer because getting a new one might have just gotten more expensive.

• 31:59Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  Uh, it's kind of like the house thing, you know, if people who bought a house 30 years ago or whatever, and they locked in a good interest rate. Well, now they can't move because interest is so high and prices are up.

• 32:08Matt Farah?

  If you sold it, where would you go?

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Exactly. So.

• 32:11Matt Farah?

  I mean, I guess it's good news that batteries seem to be lasting longer than people thought they would.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 32:16Matt Farah?

  Uh, the testing, the original testing cycles were a little more abusive than regular driving duty cycles, it seems.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, but we had, we had a lot of research happening here, you know, all around the world, there's a lot of research on the solid state problem.

• 32:28Matt Farah?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  And if we pulled money out of that, I mean, Toyota's already developed some pretty strong examples of it. But that technology will probably blossom somewhere else.

• 32:37Matt Farah?

  Yeah, like, I don't know, China, maybe.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 32:41Matt Farah?

  Um, but incentives work, right? Like people like, you know, incentives and disincentives work. You put, you fucking make something prohibitively expensive with taxes and people stop buying it.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Cigarettes.

• 32:53Matt Farah?

  You make it, you know, more, you make it less expensive through incentives and people buy more of it. I mean, that, that literally that works, like capital, pure capitalism like works.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that, is that pure capitalism though? Because you're like subsidizing one thing and another, nudging it? And that happens across so many industries.

• 33:14Matt Farah?

  I just mean, maybe that's, you're right, sorry. It's not pure capitalism, because it's not pure hands-off capitalism, but like, the money will drive the behavior, the incentive. That's kind of more like what I meant, even though I probably used idiot terminology, because I went to art school. Just say. A really, really good art school, you guys. Oh, fuck me, but, I mean, it's just, it, it puts us so fucking far behind, just to like, like, just be like, like, no, let's not do progress. Like, come on. Like, let's not do science, let's not do clean energy, like, what, like, are you for

• 33:59Matt Farah?

  real? Like, what, do you some fucking, like, stupid movie villain, like, bring back coal? Like, what are you fucking doing?

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Well, I know, and there's a lot of articles that'll explain this better than I ever could, but like, the number of jobs in coal is actually quite small, because power is made mostly by like, you know, natural gas and other ways now. But I just, I know people, I know there's a lot of people that listen, and in the car world, that don't like EVs, and they're like, ha ha, it didn't work, or wasn't it a dumb experiment? And I think it was failed in some ways, but it worked in some ways, and it's like, did everything get a fair shake? And I just wish, it would just be, it just makes so much more sense to be like, alright, the sun is always on, like, in the daytime, so what if we just capture that power? I know that the capture of the power is hard, but it, you know, we can solve these problems,

• 34:46Speaker 01

  and then you could just transmit that electricity into a car, drive around, like, versus drilling, refining, pollution, and then they got, and like, the drill baby drill thing, that we already produce more oil than any other country, we export a ton of it. They don't, like, oil companies don't want the price of oil to go down, they don't want things to be cheaper.

• 35:06Matt Farah?

  Honestly, I, I, I think, I feel like they're only killing it for some kind of revenge on anything Joe Biden attached his name to.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Lot of that, absolutely.

• 35:16Matt Farah?

  And, and, you know, 20%

• 35:21Matt Farah?

  Money, you know, they're they're they're donors.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Donors, yeah.

• 35:24Matt Farah?

  Their donor money, whatever. It's depressing. I mean, it really is because like having now done enough road tripping over the last five years in EVs, like I have actually personally witnessed progress to go from, oh, this is sketchy to actually you can do this with only the very mildest of inconveniences in almost the same amount of time you could do it in a in a gas car. And and with drastically improved infrastructure, drastically improved charge speeds, drastically improved real time charger availability data. I mean, when I'm using my Taycan, which is a now a four model year old car, right?

• 36:09Matt Farah?

  But the software has been updated for the root finder. They just like, I don't know, maybe a month ago, I forgot to put in the video, shit, like a month ago, the root planning software updated and now shows number of stalls available at each charger. And if they if they fill up, it changes my route to go to one that has available chargers.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 36:31Matt Farah?

  So it didn't do that in January when I bought the car. Now it does it like I we keep adding getting more and more and more tools pretty rapidly to, you know, make EV road tripping like a real thing that you don't that, you know, that there shouldn't need to be that much planning for. And I think a lot of people are much more scared than they need to be of doing an EV road trip. The real difference like is you can't like speed like crazy. Like like there's not really a good argument for saying, oh, you have to set the cruise control at 75 like you can't go 90 or 100, you'll go through fast like, well, you're

• 37:15Matt Farah?

  not supposed to go 90 or 100. I mean, I don't have a good, other than you feel like it, I don't have a good, David Zipper pressed me on this when I when I forget if I was on his podcast or he was on mine or he was on this one, but but he he, I think we had him on because he was talking about speed limiters on vehicles and and he tried to make me say, you know, give any reason that a car should be able to go over like 100 miles an hour. And like other, there's no other reason than racetracks and because I want to.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Sure, of course.

• 37:48Matt Farah?

  And that's not really a great reason.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Well, it's not, I mean, it's not a strong argument against the safety and the danger and the, you know, higher kinetic energy and all those other things. Like, you can't win that argument. And you could try to play like, you know, the freedom of choice game and all these other things, but like, it's just not as binary.

• 38:05Matt Farah?

  Well, I'm just saying that that's not a great argument for why a gas car is such a better road trip car than an EV car. It's like, because I can break the speed limit by more.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  But how does that, I don't understand how that's a factor, because we've been in EVs that go 170 miles per hour.

• 38:22Matt Farah?

  But I'm saying, but if you're actually road tripping across the country.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 38:26Matt Farah?

  Real world, you and I, in my white Porsche, which you have to sit at 74, otherwise your range goes like this.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:33Matt Farah?

  Or a Bentley GT, where in the middle of the desert, nobody's around, we're safe, we can go 120 for an hour and a half and see three people.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  But we'll also burn a lot more fuel.

• 38:42Matt Farah?

  We will, but there's so many more stops and you can stop so much faster that it's just not, it doesn't affect you mentally the same way that it affects somebody driving fast in an EV and going through.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  I mean, a good race to do, maybe just be something we just do on paper with math, is like, you cross the country and, I mean, it's the cannonball thing, right? It's, if Bentley crosses the country and averages 98 miles per hour, but they have X number of stops, because you're not putting a bladder in the trunk like Ed Bullion.

• 39:08Matt Farah?

  We can look at cannonball, actual cannonball results for this.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Oh, and just, yeah.

• 39:12Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, like, I think the, I mean, the record for a gas car is like 26s or something, which is crazy.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  But I mean, stock gas tank, you know, for most people.

• 39:22Matt Farah?

  Oh, without extended, yeah.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  I'm saying that, so, yes, like, you can speed across the desert in your Bentley, and you could fill up more often, but if you're stopping 10 times across the country instead of four in your battery car, or six.

• 39:33Matt Farah?

  Okay, so what we need to do is contact Ed Bullion and figure out what is the best cannonball time with a stock gas tank.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:44Matt Farah?

  Which I'm sure there's a category for, and then compare that to Alex Roy or one of these other guys who's got the best, you know, I think Alex has the cannonball record for.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  For Tesla.

• 39:54Matt Farah?

  For an electric car, I think. Um, I think it's like forty something hours. I mean, the difference in a ca- in an actual cannonball between the best you could do in an electric car and the best you can do in a gas car is like a lot. It's like forty percent.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 40:09Matt Farah?

  But these guys are running sixty gallons of gas, so that's not exactly apples to apples.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz the general public, I just, I think I'm just sad that the experiment has been, you know, kiboshed for now because the gas car experiment took longer to get to where we are than we realized cuz we weren't alive.

• 40:25Matt Farah?

  Sure.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  But we, we talked about this before, nineteen hundreds, tens, twenties, finding gas, what was it, leaded, unleaded, like, new technology takes, it can, it seems like it arrives quickly, but perfecting it can take a much longer time.

• 40:38Matt Farah?

  A hundred years ago, the nickname for cars, literally nineteen twenty-five, the nickname for cars in city were murder machines. So many people were killed by cars in the city that they were calling them murder machines. And that's where, um, literally, all car lobbying associations came because the people who lived in cities wanted cars fucking out of cities. And so the trip, trip, that's where AAA started, by the way. AAA started as like a lobbying group to keep cars, you know, going when they were wildly unpopular because of how many people they murdered.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 41:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it was crazy. Um, but like, that was a hundred years ago. You know, the first public EV charge network of any real kind was what, twenty twelve?

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:24Matt Farah?

  We're, we're, we're, year thirteen right now. Like, come on, man, like, and, you know, the rest of the country ain't, or, excuse me, the rest of the world is not stopping this.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:34Matt Farah?

  You know what I mean? So like, all that's happening is we're gonna fall further and further behind. The rest of the world is gonna keep going, and we're just gonna have to spend more money later to catch up. Like, it's not gonna go away. You think, like, come on, it's crazy. So good times. We should, we should go to the people.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  Can we talk about interiors real quick?

• 41:56Matt Farah?

  Oh, always.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Well, I went, I went to Good Vibes this morning, which was very fun. I also, like, I haven't driven my car that hard since I put tires and brakes on it. The Bridgestone pretends a race, like, yes, they gave them to me for free. And so I'll, I'll tell you a negative about them, just so people understand that I'm not just saying they're the perfect thing. Sidewall's super hard. Around town, way harder than the Veritasines I drove around on. Like, noisier, less comfortable, blah, blah, blah. In the canyons, holy shit. They are so sticky. Dude, I was carrying such amazing speed.

• 42:27Matt Farah?

  What are they, Potenza what? I think that's what I have on the NSX.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  They hustle.

• 42:32Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  And Thad was behind me and we got to a stop and he's like, "You have some grip and momentum in the corner, my friend." And alignment I have that Avos did, like, the thing tracks straight on the highway. It's not dirty or there's not a lot of toe in, but the turn-in is still super quick.

• 42:47Matt Farah?

  Nice.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Thad drove it, like, the thing hauls ass and it feels really sticky and really nice and light. And I just kind of forgot that, because it's been under so many surgeries.

• 42:56Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  And the power steering shit stayed on, nothing, because I, I was in, you know, seven grand, I'm going, "This is when the pulleys will fall off. If they're gonna, it's gonna happen now."

• 43:05Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  And everything was fine.

• 43:06Matt Farah?

  Great.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Fucking great.

• 43:07Matt Farah?

  Okay. Okay, what about interiors?

• 43:09Speaker 01

  So, um, I want to do this plaid insert thing I've been talking about, so I asked our body shop neighbor if he had any references.

• 43:16Matt Farah?

  Uh huh.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  And he gave me one and he said that this person is highly skilled, like, OEM level for decades. They've worked together for a long time. And he's like, "He's not concourse expensive, he's not cheap, he's in the middle." And I was like, "All right, that sounds pretty good." Like, and so I called this person and got an estimate on the phone. And it was $4,000 to redo the front seats with seat inserts and new leather on the outsides. And I was like-

• 43:41Matt Farah?

  $4,000? For two seats?

• 43:44Speaker 01

  For two seats. And I could buy Recaro's for that and probably just have, like, those inserts pillow made, because it's less complicated. So I, I'm gonna call a different shop. But that was, that was just a higher number than I was expecting.

• 43:57Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I think-

• 44:00Matt Farah?

  Yeah, uh, that's high. Uh, but not as high as it could be. I mean, you're talking about the whole seat, right? Two whole, the front two entire seats.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Yes, but our friend Sarah Trimble went to a different place and that bench seat that looked so good in her truck.

• 44:15Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Was done for several hundred dollars.

• 44:17Matt Farah?

  Great.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Simpler seat.

• 44:18Matt Farah?

  I would call them, that's a, that's a three-person across bench.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  True.

• 44:22Matt Farah?

  That's basically a couch.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:24Matt Farah?

  That goes into a car.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  It is less complicated.

• 44:27Matt Farah?

  But I would also call that shop too.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:29Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, if you need, I, I don't say, I wouldn't say you need, um, not concourse but middle.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Right, right, this person is great.

• 44:37Matt Farah?

  I would say you need not middle, but bottom.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  I don't want, I don't want, I don't want you to, I don't want to open the door and see like wrinkly leather and, you know.

• 44:44Matt Farah?

  I don't think you would.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  But, uh, that might've been a little too nice for me, I think, yeah.

• 44:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, that probably, you know, in fairness, it probably takes, is it one dude by himself?

• 44:53Speaker 01

  It is one person, it is a skilled artisan by himself.

• 44:56Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  So I, I respect, I, here's what, I don't think his pricing is unjust. I think it, I think I wish I'd made these calls before I ordered $400 of Scottish material.

• 45:06Matt Farah?

  Yes.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  You know?

• 45:08Matt Farah?

  Yes.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  It's like I should, like, you're doing.

• 45:10Matt Farah?

  I know exactly what you did. You saw and went, ooh, that one.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:13Matt Farah?

  Order. How much do I need? Better get a little extra.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  I did exactly that. Cause you, you know the research you're doing, we don't need to talk about what it is, but we went to a meeting earlier this week. You're doing homework beforehand. And I'm just buying parts.

• 45:25Matt Farah?

  Yeah, look, we've been there. We've, we've all been there, but yeah, yeah, okay.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  So that was my, that's why I was texting you today.

• 45:31Matt Farah?

  Yeah, you can probably get it done for less, for sure.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:34Matt Farah?

  But you could also, and you're talking about Recaro's, like buckets or like fold-back Recaro's?

• 45:40Matt Farah?

  Like the ones in the BB car? Like those kind of Recaro's?

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, those, I don't know how much of those, I'm not gonna buy Recaro's. I just feel like with the amount this person wanted, I was like, I could buy new seats.

• 45:52Matt Farah?

  Yes, you could.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Probably take those apart, you know, because some of those Recaro's, like, the center comes out like Velcro.

• 45:58Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah, like, those are, that's like what I had when I did my Mustang or any of those. You just, you take the centers out and you basically have them make you a pillow.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Bingo.

• 46:06Matt Farah?

  And that's a couple hundred bucks. That's not a big deal.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:09Matt Farah?

  Um, but if they're doing, because your M3 seat is a lot of pieces.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  True.

• 46:14Matt Farah?

  That's a

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Got moving

• 46:15Matt Farah?

  There's moving things and there's a lot of like stitching across it and stuff. That's, that's probably a lot.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  We'll see. I'm gonna go to a second shop, uh, next week and I'll see, and if they also say four grand, I'll be like, well, I'm gonna buy some Recaro's then.

• 46:29Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  At that point, I might as well sit lower.

• 46:31Matt Farah?

  But, but, um,

• 46:32Speaker 01

  But then I get the seat position I want for that one. It's expensive.

• 46:35Matt Farah?

  And you save weight.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:37Matt Farah?

  Hmm.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. Or I just sell this tartan on the internet and just go, eh, fuck it.

• 46:42Matt Farah?

  Someone will want some tartan.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Who wants, uh, to make 15 kilts?

• 46:45Matt Farah?

  Myers Manks may want it. I gave, there's so, you know, if somebody were, they, they have to,

• 46:53Matt Farah?

  They have to get my approval. But I, my extra bus fabric from the, from the Safari, I gave to Myers Manks. They have, I think it's three yards of it. Um, they have enough to do one vehicle. So it didn't work with the color that I wanted and I didn't want to change the color to one that would, I didn't want to do it a color just to fit the, the fabric. It would look amazing on a Myers Manks though. So, uh, if somebody wants to order a Myers Manks with that fabric, you can actually get it. They have enough to do one.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  And don't let them charge you for the fabric because you know you got, that they got it for free.

• 47:34Matt Farah?

  It comes with, it comes with the buggy. Um, okay, I am out of, uh, I'm out of things. So let's go to the fucking people. And before we do, uh, I want to remind everybody that Road and Track has updated our fall event. The Seaside to Sierra Rally is gonna be sick. It's, uh, gonna be Sonoma, Healdsburg, Sonoma Raceway. It's gonna be Pruitt Winery, uh, with Scott Pruitt on hand, giving hot laps around Sonoma, doing a fireside chat. Going to be Lake Tahoe, it's gonna be, it's actually the Ritz Carlton Lake Tahoe. Best hotels, restaurants, and one of the best racetracks in the country. And it was originally gonna be the first weekend in September.

• 48:15Matt Farah?

  That's Labor Day weekend, we've moved it to the end, it's now the 24th to 27th of September. So if you wanna come drive with me and road and track in Northern California. Best hotels, best wine, best food, best roads, Sonoma Raceway. Fabulous racing driver on hand, I'm gonna be giving hot laps and stuff as well. Uh, come out out. Uh, but yes, the Patreon is also what the fuck is up. Patreon.com slash the smoke and tire podcast. That's how you ask us questions, that's how you watch the live stream, that's how you get the show before anybody else, that's how you get the show without ads. It's how you participate in our polls, it's how you get exclusive merchandising and more.

• 49:00Matt Farah?

  Uh, let's see what we've got. Starting with barbecue sauce on my titties. Fuck you money and Porsche will listen to what you say. What are you, what piece unique are you building in the Porsche family? Um, uh, and recommends a Panamera Sport Turismo Dakar, which I think is a pretty cool choice. That sounds pretty fun. I saw when I was over in Germany, the, you know, the Porsche family gets to build these special cars that don't exist. And I saw a, a Targa that had a GT3 RS engine in it, uh, and a manual gearbox. And that was superior. So I would have that.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  That's pretty rad.

• 49:43Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Um.

• 49:47Matt Farah?

  Any Mothman of my, oh wait. Whoa, okay.

• 49:52Matt Farah?

  Can you fig, oh. All right, what is a, okay, any Mothman of mine, lot of words here, sorry. What is a good color strap that would complement an emerald green dial and gold face of the watch? Uh, I mean, green to match the dial. Uh, you could do black or white. If you wanna go summery crazy, you can go white. Uh, you can go with a gray. Uh, you could go with a green, uh, green?

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Green or greens aggressively?

• 50:26Matt Farah?

  Yellow?

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yellow, yellow or a gold that works with it would be cool.

• 50:30Matt Farah?

  Yellow could work, yeah.

• 50:33Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I'd go fucking bright, a bright rubber strap for the summer.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Bright yellow is very Lotus.

• 50:39Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 50:42Matt Farah?

  I don't know what, I don't know what, what is the C, what is CRA, Zach? On J R G Vespa's question?

• 50:49Speaker 01

  I'll look up.

• 50:50Matt Farah?

  I don't know what, I'm not sure what that is. Gin and Tonics State Park, Gin and Tonics State Parkway is excellent. Uh, AMG GT Coops. I've gotten cheapy cheaps. Sixty K for a similar price, you can get an early Audi R8. Which would you rather have, uh, both automatic? An AMG GT? Or an R8, an early R8? I'd probably rather have an early R8.

• 51:17Matt Farah?

  Right? Early R8 or early AMG GT? I'm gonna go with the R8.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  I'd rather walk out and look at the R8 and drive the R8. The steering's better than GT, but. Yeah, R8, R8 feels more exotic, even though the GT Coops are fantastic cars.

• 51:31Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  But park next to each other, people will think the R8 costs three times as much.

• 51:34Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Uh, did you look up what that thing was?

• 51:37Speaker 01

  CRA is, um, Congress was deciding whether to use the Congressional Review Act, CRA, to overturn several EPA waivers regarding California and CARB. Um, I'm not familiar with the story or the update.

• 51:51Matt Farah?

  I haven't seen it. We'll check it out and get back to you next episode. Uh, let's see, uh, LIDAR nipples. Uh, what cars are imperfect, but perfect for what they're designed to do? Uh, example being a Miata, but, uh, you know, slow but fun. Uh, so narrowly focused cars, okay? Perfect for what they're designed for. Um, the Hummer H1 is a great example.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:17Matt Farah?

  Uh, something like a Sherp is a great example. Um, your Miata example is a great example.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Aerial Adam.

• 52:26Matt Farah?

  Yeah. A McLaren Senna.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:29Matt Farah?

  Uh, or, or any number of extremely fast cars. The Saline S7 was a great road, race car and a horrible road car.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:42Matt Farah?

  Yeah, there's any, pick your very focused car.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  Anything that's has its main purpose is one thing and any other secondary purpose is like, oh, that's right, people will also take this to a drive thru.

• 52:53Matt Farah?

  A rock bouncer, like.

• 52:56Matt Farah?

  Uh, Ted Stryker, uh, what cars have you had the largest change of opinion in in the last five to 10 years, something you initially liked and now dislike and vice versa? Now, that's a very good and interesting question. Hmm.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Um, fifth and sixth gen Camaros, for a long time, I was very focused on the squinting of them and now I go, good chassis, good engine, they can make good decent track cars, they're comfortable enough, like, I think they're, I think they're very solid overall vehicles.

• 53:26Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Um, largest opinion.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  You know, I think my biggest change was in the, when in my late twenties and stuff, when we started doing this, everything had to be the fastest, the sharpest, the most exciting, it had, it had to be the previous question of no compromise, why are you not trying to be a race car driver?

• 53:43Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  And then now you can, you can, I can find joy in a slower thing, or a softer thing, or a friendly thing, it's not just about speed and all that stuff.

• 53:52Matt Farah?

  I, I would say that is very, very true, very true, I can now, yeah, see, see a lot of joy in different types of driving that maybe I wouldn't have seen before, and also like, yeah, realizing that like, race cars on the street are bad. Maybe, like, that's probably a good one, you shouldn't have, uh, you definitely shouldn't have harnesses on the street.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:21Matt Farah?

  Okay. Uh, Enrico Palazzo said, when you mentioned the automatic and manual Miata have different engine internals, it made me wonder about other hidden differences in variants of the same cars that most people might not know about, example being the C6 Z06, which had a different chassis than other Corvettes, yeah, it had aluminum where other people had, where the other Corvettes had steel. Um, what other cars were they like, um, the, I don't know, but the ZO6 is a different model though. But like there, there were some other cars, the Acura NSX, for instance. The second, the NA2, like mine. When they continued to make it in, in both stick and a slush box.

• 55:06Matt Farah?

  They never upgraded the engine of the slush box. So when the, when the, the manual went to the 3.2, if you bought an automatic, it still had the old engine in it. Cause they, they never developed the new engine for the automatic.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 55:19Matt Farah?

  Yeah. So there was that.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  That's a pretty good one.

• 55:22Matt Farah?

  Yeah. I mean, you know, the Ferrari Monneel T, I've talked about a bunch, they changed the direction of the engine 90 degrees. They go from a transverse engine to a longitudinal engine, which I think that's the only car where they've ever done that.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  That's a huge architectural change. That's pretty wild.

• 55:37Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Um, the Delco Pooper, what's your favorite piece of camera equipment right now?

• 55:46Matt Farah?

  I don't know, that ca- that Sony camera, I guess?

• 55:48Speaker 01

  Piece of camera equipment. I mean, the A7 is awesome. It does look way, way nicer. Hopefully you guys noticed the difference in the videos. Uh, those iPhone mics, I mean, I know they look huge and it's not a technology that's brand new, but the fact like the iPhone microphone is so good at compression and limiting and stuff and dealing with wind and to have that ability in something that connects via digital so fast. I mean, a lab set that did that, that we bought six years ago for like TV production.

• 56:17Matt Farah?

  Twelve hundred dollars.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  Yes, four figures to start.

• 56:20Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  And now it's like a couple hundred bucks.

• 56:22Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  And it just works and charges. It's amazing.

• 56:24Matt Farah?

  And that, that audio recorder I've got too, the 32 bit, the F3 where you can, you can use it in almost any condition imaginable and not peek it out. That's fucking nice. Yeah. Stuff that helps you, helps you get. Stress-free usable audio to us is much more important than some camera upgrade at this point.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, the variation in volume of sound while driving a fast car and talking and stuff is so great. It's very challenging for recorders to deal with.

• 56:56Matt Farah?

  Yeah. JF's transverse skid mark. There's rumors that Lotus may have to abandon the supercharged Toyota V6 due to no longer meeting emission standards, but may put a V8 in its place instead. I have not read that, but okay. What V8 could they realistically use? I mean, the smart money says Mercedes because they've already got a relationship with them, but that would necessitate a longitude. You can't, you're not going to transversally mount a V8.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  How sick would it be if they did an NA 4-liter V8 from Mercedes?

• 57:28Matt Farah?

  That would be awesome.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  That would sound so good and probably rev a lot.

• 57:32Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that would be cool. I wonder how that would work. I don't know. I mean,

• 57:39Matt Farah?

  this is this, now we have to look to the Mondelet. Are they going to switch to a longitudinal engine? I mean, it's been done before, like there is precedent, but if they really switch to a V8, like what V8 can you use transversely? Like, it would have to be small, really small.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, because you have an extra cylinder, so it's going to be a little bit longer.

• 58:01Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  It would have to be very, very, very short, tiny pistons.

• 58:05Matt Farah?

  I can't possibly. I mean, I don't know. That'd be cool, though.

• 58:13Matt Farah?

  Uh, Christian wants to ask about touchscreens. I, let me tell you, Christian, I've just submitted a piece to Rodent Track this morning that I think is 2,200 words, and you will have my thoughts on touchscreens on rodenttrack.com. It won't be paywalled or anything in the next couple of days.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 58:32Matt Farah?

  Uh, it's all I've been doing for the last 36 hours is writing this piece, so I don't want to talk about it anymore.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  And don't scoop yourself.

• 58:40Matt Farah?

  I'm not going to scoop myself, yeah.

• 58:44Matt Farah?

  S Calcu? Scalcu? Uh, I'm purchasing an Audi RS3 later this summer uh, to work at your favorite, uh, winter ski resort in Montana? Really? Cool. And I'm wondering if you think I should do a full PPF or protect the leading surfaces and splash areas? How long do you plan to keep the car? I mean, that's, that's my big one is, is if you're gonna keep the car for more than five years, I would just go full PPF. Especially in winter conditions, it'll clean really quick. They use salt and shit up there. I would, I would probably go full PPF if you're gonna keep that car for a long time. If it's like a lease, then I might

• 59:30Matt Farah?

  not do it. Just skip the whole thing. I wouldn't do the impact points. I'd either go full or, or skip it.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  Oh, I would, if you're, I mean, if you have the money,

• 59:42Speaker 01

  if turning the lease back in, if they'll ding you for, you know, chips on the front of the car, I would do the front of the car, cause every car in Colorado when I lived there, like, they put sand down, rocks, salt, and it just fucks the front of your car up. So I would PPF the impact on the front at least.

• 59:56Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Larry Chen's other Canon tattoo? There's a joke there and I don't get the reference and I feel like I'm part of it now. Doug Demiro recently had the take that, uh, Carrera GT owners don't typically have other Porsches because other Porsches are not hardcore enough. While Porsche collectors don't have Carrera GTs because they're too hardcore. He said Porsche collectors prefer the 918 instead. That's an interesting take and, I mean, as a Carrera GT owner, he probably knows better than I do. But I know Porsche collectors who own and love and collect the Carrera GT.

• 1:00:36Matt Farah?

  And I can, the, and I can think of a couple people who I've known who've owned Carrera GTs who don't have other Porsches. I think the, I think the Apple, Apple, whatever, pendulum. I think it swings both ways.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:49Matt Farah?

  I think there's, I don't think there's, same thing as, as Doug likes to talk about those people who obsess over the colors and shit. Uh, the people that I know will talk about the color for 20 seconds and then move on to something else. It's, you know, and typically because someone has asked. You know?

• 1:01:06Matt Farah?

  So I, I, I think that's like a, that's like a hot take and I think there's probably evidence to support that argument, but I think there's evidence to support. I would bet if you polled every Carrera GT owner, more of them own other Porsches than don't.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz they, that's how you get allocations.

• 1:01:24Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:29Matt Farah?

  Here from Matt's Cat says, thoughts on the Genesis, I didn't see that, sorry.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  Neither.

• 1:01:36Matt Farah?

  Is there more?

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, they had a question about our Tesla government grant.

• 1:01:45Matt Farah?

  They wants to ask about that, that, the DOE, the DOE loan about the Cybertruck thing. I mean, I don't, I don't have it now. I remember it being a thing back then. I'd have to go to fucking like Niedermeyer or somebody to get it. I don't, I don't follow the.

• 1:02:01Matt Farah?

  There's too much news for me to remember this at this point.

• 1:02:07Matt Farah?

  That, that was a thing then. And I can, I'll, I'll ask Niedermeyer, Niedermeyer and I'll find it, but I, I would have to go do some more research on that.

• 1:02:21Matt Farah?

  Bad Gardener says, what special editions could you see yourself pursuing? A Jag Project 7 or 8, a Celine XP8 Continental GT3R? I mean, none of, special editions.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  The Jag, I really liked the Jag XF. We had one as a press car. I remember it well. Like it sounded good, looked good, long wheelbase, but when they came out with the like hyper version, the 7, 8, I was like, is that the right car to make into a race car? And I mean, engineers can make anything into a race car.

• 1:02:51Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  But that one just never drew my attention because it seemed like such a compromised product, I think.

• 1:02:57Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Most of those I think are fun little things that are good for reviewing and whatever, but they're not like, they're not anything I have any, that much interest in purchasing. I mean, I'd like to have an, alright, fine. I'd like to have an NSXR.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 1:03:16Matt Farah?

  I'd like to maybe, we're talking about Fantasy Garage, like a 190 Evo 2. Something like that, or a, or like an, you know, a pre-merger AMG Hammer. That could be something that I would be into, yeah.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Well, is this a road car? Prodrive 550 Murano? That was a race car. That doesn't count.

• 1:03:35Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Yeah, it counts. Agent 325 says, "With prices of air-cooled Porsches being so high, average-conditioned G-body cars like 80K, wide-body 993s for 150, are these cars a 100K-plus driving experience?" I mean, look, you're not spending 100K because if you buy this car and you maintain it, it might go up, it might go down a bit, your net will not be 100K. Your net might be 15 or 20. So, is it a 15,000 or 20,000-dollar driving experience? Yep, you betcha. You know.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  That's a good way to do the math.

• 1:04:18Matt Farah?

  Yeah, like, your cost, your cost to buy in might be 100, but that's not your total cost.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  As long as you plan to sell it at some point.

• 1:04:26Matt Farah?

  Sure.

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah.

• 1:04:28Matt Farah?

  But like, if you're talking about an investment car, you have to sell it for it to be an investment.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33Matt Farah?

  Otherwise, you're just lighting money on fire for fun, which is fun. Like, great, do that, but, but when you're, like, no, it's not 100,000, it's not a typically exotic driving experience, but those cars offer a type of driving that is not, like, it's a unique driving experience. And it's like, they're well-made. They're, they're faster than the power numbers would indicate. They, they do things better than the numbers would indicate.

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  I also think that this measure is challenging, and I know it's like a term we like, but it depends so much on someone's finances and what they value in driving. And also, like, if you compare it to a new car that's 100 grand and how that feels, and how, and the power it delivers, you can go, well, an old car's not gonna do the same thing. But is it gonna be more fun and therefore give me more enjoyment than this six-figure thing, you know, that costs the same amount, but it's brand-new?

• 1:05:31Matt Farah?

  Yeah. And it, and it's money in, money out also, so. Roth V., "What would, what would Papa Roger have driven today in his twenties and thirties, assuming same career and lifestyle trajectory as back in the day?" Well, he had a 72GTO in college. He then got a Mercury Cougar after college. That was when he was working in New York City and met my mother. Um, so he probably would have had like a Mustang. I mean, I imagine it would have been a Mustang situation. I mean, if you want to talk about accuracy, all the cars he bought from college until today, with the exception of two,

• 1:06:11Matt Farah?

  were bought from his friend Bob at Town Motors in Englewood, New Jersey. So all vehicles were limited to a certain set of brands.

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  What Bob sold.

• 1:06:21Matt Farah?

  Which was Lincoln, Mercury, Porsche, Audi, Subaru. It's a good, good, good spread, actually, for, for a long time. So that covered a lot. Um, but, other than his Lexus LS and the Mercedes S-Class he had for a while, yeah.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  Do you think he, alright, well, do you think he would have gone at like an RS6 at some point? Audi, you said Audi Subaru?

• 1:06:42Matt Farah?

  If he was in his twenties and thirties, he wasn't making money like that. No, it would have been, it would have, he, well, it was Mercury. It was a Mercury Cougar. So today, mm, they don't have Mercury or Lincoln anymore. So it's now it's Porsche Audi Subaru. So today it would be, uh, probably like an Audi A5. Or something like that, yeah.

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  Maybe S5 for a little bit of.

• 1:07:02Matt Farah?

  Maybe a little speed.

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:04Matt Farah?

  A little speed.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  Coming out of the GTO.

• 1:07:05Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  He would little, wants a little go.

• 1:07:07Matt Farah?

  Seventy-two Judge. Apparently quite rare. Um, it was the first year after the GTO no longer was a standalone model and went back to being the Le Mans GTO. They have the big, like the seven, the sixty-nine to seventy-one is the one that everyone likes with the little nostrils up high. The seventy-two has the big nostrils down low. Quite rare, but not as desirable as the earlier car.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Four fifty-five and cubic inch engine, three hundred horsepower.

• 1:07:38Matt Farah?

  Uh, that sounds right. Yeah.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  Did, did, did.

• 1:07:40Matt Farah?

  Thought it was seventy, seventy-two? Thought that was a four hundred still.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 1:07:45Matt Farah?

  I thought four fifty-five was after that.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  Maybe there were two options.

• 1:07:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah, maybe.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  There also might have been two options.

• 1:07:49Matt Farah?

  Uh.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, there's a base engine, uh, of four hundred, I don't know.

• 1:07:53Matt Farah?

  My dad had the Judge. Whatever the Judge was in seventy-two, that's what he had. That might have been the four fifty-five.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 1:07:59Matt Farah?

  I don't know. Um.

• 1:08:02Matt Farah?

  Just the tip, well, okay, just the Tiptronic. How much does a specialness of X or X factor weigh into your car buying decisions? Uh, for instance, an Amira seems more special than a Cayman GTS, but the Cayman GTS is probably the better car. Uh, well, I've driven an Amira and I have a Spider. Um, I, back in the day, I bought a John Cooper Works Mini because everybody else seemed to have Subarus. I mean, I like, I liked it. It felt more German and premium than the Mitsubishi or the Subaru.

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:35Matt Farah?

  At the time. And everyone else seemed to have or want one of those, a WRX or an Evo. That was it. WRX Evo, WRX Evo. Everyone wanted one of those.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  Well, I think you do like specialness.

• 1:08:47Matt Farah?

  I do.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  You do.

• 1:08:49Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  Do, would you, so you, did you buy the Spider? Because you sent it to Deman right away.

• 1:08:54Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  Would you have bought the Spider if you had not had plans to put a bigger engine in?

• 1:08:58Matt Farah?

  No, probably not. Probably not.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:09:01Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  Because it's a fantastic car, but I didn't know if it would like, if it would have the

• 1:09:05Matt Farah?

  No, it wasn't until, no, because I drove the Spider before and I was like, oh, this is lovely. It was great. I drove it to Carl's funeral.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  Oh, that's right.

• 1:09:12Matt Farah?

  Yeah. The blue one. And it was like fabulous, but it wasn't until the following year when I drove Deman's car and went, oh, this?

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:22Matt Farah?

  Yeah, we're going to need this. Now it's a different, so the, the engine made it. Um, and next episode, we'll talk about the BGB Motorsports fucking hot BB, what the fuck?

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  A Turbo S pulled into Good Vibes today and I looked at it and I was like, that giant thing. The engine from that was in this time, and I was standing next to a GT4.

• 1:09:45Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  They took that and put it in there.

• 1:09:47Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  Holy crap.

• 1:09:48Matt Farah?

  Mostly fits.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  Little bit of plumbing, visible.

• 1:09:56Matt Farah?

  Okay, uh, let's see. Foodman Chu asked a couple of months ago for suggestions to rent a car to drive in the Angeles Forest. Uh, ended up with a ND2 Miata. Okay, there you go. Uh, and the Miata was an automatic with paddle shifters, which they say were actually really good.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:10:15Matt Farah?

  Uh, question, have you ever been surprised about how good an automatic transmission is? Especially in a predominantly manual-equipped car? Yes, several times.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  I think we mentioned this on the last show, different person, but the FRS BRZ absolutely impressed me.

• 1:10:30Matt Farah?

  So very good manual, um, or, excuse me, a very good, um, automatic, torque converter automatic, you wouldn't expect it to be so good. The, um, you know, when they first came on the scene, the ZF was like, holy shit. And they started putting it in everything and all of a sudden, you know, a Ram 1500 has decent paddle shifters, you know, that, that was kind of like a game changer when automatics became not shit, you know? Um, and there were certain cars that they produced, the car like before or after the ZF and like, you don't want one from before, like Grand Cherokee SRT is a good example of one. Aston, uh, DB9, like you don't want one of those before the ZF, like,

• 1:11:15Matt Farah?

  the, the, when they changed over, like it got so much better.

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:18Matt Farah?

  So that was a big one, yeah.

• 1:11:22Matt Farah?

  What other automatic has been surprisingly good?

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  I mean, the ZF 8-speed in BMWs was pretty great, but you kind of already mentioned that one.

• 1:11:35Matt Farah?

  That's really the, kind of the gold, the gold standard of automatic gearboxes. I mean, the, the other ones are sort of in the middle, like there's dual clutches that are amazing and, uh, Mercedes, you know, current top-tier gearbox is this wet clutch, you know, 9-speed thing that is, is pretty good.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a very good transmission.

• 1:11:53Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  Honestly, when, when Gotham Dream Cars, our old job, got a new tow rig, it had an automatic instead of the manual. Annual in the existing.

• 1:12:02Matt Farah?

  Oh, the the shorty?

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  It was a short truck.

• 1:12:04Matt Farah?

  That had the Allison.

• 1:12:05Speaker 01

  It had the Allison and the and the change buttons. It wasn't paddled. It was like on the end of the drive stock, but I remember how smoothly it shifted and how quickly. And I was like, this is great. This is really nice.

• 1:12:15Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that the Allison GM transmission. I hated that truck so much, but the power.

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:12:21Matt Farah?

  Wow. Short, single cab.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:23Matt Farah?

  Short bed, 3500. It rode like an ox cart.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  It did, but when you drove it, bingo. I moved it around the block a lot, empty, and I was like, this thing fucking hauls ass.

• 1:12:33Matt Farah?

  It ripped. Yeah. It had it sat two people and had eight cup holders. It was a hysterical thing. Yeah.

• 1:12:40Speaker 01

  That is it.

• 1:12:41Matt Farah?

  There we go. Well, that's all right, because that's our show. That's the fucking game. We got another show to do.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Next week.

• 1:12:48Matt Farah?

  You and I before before we leave. We got to do two more shows.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  Next week.

• 1:12:53Matt Farah?

  Oof. I really do a lot of radio, but I'm figuring out things to talk about. We'll talk about the twin turbo 911 powered Cayman on next show. That's a fucking good one. Thank you to our patrons. We appreciate you all. Very good questions. I'll get the answer to that Cybertruck thing from Niedermeier. I just don't remember. And yeah, we'll see you guys next time. Bye.